Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas

Great Stirrup Cay, Bahamas                                                                   March 21, 2022



Well, we’ve changed cruise directors.  The cruise director is the main go between from passengers to ship information, activities, and policy.  His first big announcement was that we were not going to go to Bermuda but were going to stop at Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas.  This was a bit frustrating since a week ago we were required to fill out electronic forms required to land in Bermuda and had to pay a fee of $40 each so we could go ashore in Bermuda.  The $40 is supposed to come back to us in shipboard credit.  The opportunity to visit Bermuda will not be returned.  

The first question that springs to mind is whether the last word in the title is pronounced “Key” or “Kay”.  This arises because when we stopped in Belize we stopped on Harvest Caye and our cruise director at that time pronounced it “Key” and informed us that this was the correct communication.  I note there is a difference in spelling.  You may wonder why you haven’t seen anything on Harvest Caye.  It is because it is a very small island owned by the cruise company.  This is the latest thing in cruising.  Cruise companies purchasing small islands and turning them into their own private resort-like stops.  They do this so they can capture a larger percentage of your vacation dollar by monopolizing your time for a day and offering opportunities to spend money.  We walked onto the island, walked around a bit, then returned to the ship without doing much although the butterfly enclosure was quite nice.  We did not take pics and did not think it was worth noting.  Because this is our second company-owned island of the trip we decided we should at least give you an idea of what they are like.


We parked off shore and used island tenders, not the ship tenders to go ashore.  We were parked near “our island” and looked over at an adjacent island owned by  Royal Caribbean which had two large ships already docked and the world’s largest cruise ship, Wonder of the Seas (which can hold a maximum of 6,988 passengers and 2300 crew) passing us by on its way to docking there also.  


We have no idea how many people were on board, but I’m betting its more than we have (750 capacity and only 300 on board with 400 crew).  We disembarked via the tender and were taken to shore.  Unlike the ship tenders which are enclosed so they can double as life boats, the island tenders have open seating on a second open deck which we took advantage of.  It appears these islands are quite similar in how they are organized.  You can go to the beach, they are set up for thousands, visit bars and restaurants, shop, and do a couple of activities like kayaking, zip lining (both islands create a high point and send out the zip lines to several towers before returning it to the starting point at the bottom), putting as in golf, snorkeling, etc.  Because we were such a small ship or because of covid or because they can not find enough workers, or for some other unknown reason, they did not appear to be fully open.  We walked along the beach, watched several zip liners ($65), took some pictures, walked through the shopping area and returned to the ship.  Again, barely worth mentioning except if you take a cruise in the Caribbean you are likely to have a stop at a cruise company owned island.







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